It was sheer chance that had conducted him that way; and not from having seen either the hunter or his sorry steed.
The former—if not the latter—was satisfied at being treated in that cavalier style; but, long before the Headless Horseman had passed out of sight, Zeb had taken his dimensions, and made himself acquainted with his character.
Though he might be a mystery to all the world beside, he was no longer so to Zebulon Stump.
As the horse shot past in fleet career, the skirt of the serapé, flouted up by the wind, displayed to Stump’s optics a form well known to him—in a dress he had seen before. It was a blouse of blue cottonade, box-plaited over the breast; and though its vivid colour was dashed with spots of garish red, the hunter was able to recognise it.
He was not so sure about the face seen low down upon the saddle, and resting against the rider’s leg.
There was nothing strange in his inability to recognise it.
The mother, who had oft looked fondly on that once fair countenance, would not have recognised it now.
Zeb Stump only did so by deduction. The horse, the saddle, the holsters, the striped blanket, the sky-blue coat and trousers—even the hat upon the head—were all known to him. So, too, was the figure that stood almost upright in the stirrups. The head and face must belong to the same—notwithstanding their unaccountable displacement.
Zeb saw it by no uncertain glance. He was permitted a full, fair view of the ghastly spectacle.
The steed, though going at a gallop, passed within ten paces of him.